hard to know what road if any leads to an office building in every city

with big signs that read: GUARANTEED BUY-BACK GUN DEPOSIT HERE,

or if we could go there to purge ourselves

of our guns without the threat of feeling

that we’re the ones about to be under attack.

How many parents must send their kids to school

knowing that today could be the last time

they see one another.

How many?

By Matthew Laverty

A poem from Disarm: A Themed issue Responding to Mass Shootings in America

Biography:

Matthew Laverty earned a BLA from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell where he studied creative writing under award winning poet Maggie Dietz and critically acclaimed author Andre Dubus III. His poems have appeared at Poetry Quarterly, FORTH Magazine, and elsewhere. You can find him on Twitter @MattLavPoems, and on his Tumblr site MattLavWrites.